by Stacia Kane
Leora Lawden stepped into her path, a shy smile on her pretty face. Funny, Megan had never thought Winston’s features would look right on a girl, but they did.
“Megan,” Leora said, “I was hoping maybe we could talk.”
Megan plastered on a smile and forced herself not to shoot a longing look at Greyson and Roc. Leora would see it, and the girl looked so . . . not out of place, but eager somehow. How old was she? She couldn’t have been out of her early twenties at the very oldest. “Sure, of course. Is something wrong?”
“No, I just . . .” Leora sat down at the table. Megan did the same. “My father always speaks so highly of you, and he thought it would be a good idea. I guess he figures it will be easier on me, all of this, if I have someone to talk to. And if it’s you, that’s even better.”
“I’m flattered,” Megan said, because she didn’t know what else to say. “I like your father.”
Leora’s face glowed. “He’s wonderful. Everything he’s done for me—”
“Attention, everyone!” Speak of the devil—er, demon. Winston Lawden had raised his full glass. “We’ve had a delicious meal, and I’m sure we all look forward to a productive week. But I think we must all pause now to remember one among us who is no longer here. I would like to propose a toast to Templeton Black. Long live his memory.”
“Alri neshden Templeton Black,” everyone said, and drank, their arms lifting in unison.
Everyone except Greyson.
Chapter 9
“Why didn’t you drink to Templeton?” she asked him later, once they were back in their room.
“Hmm? Oh. It’s not appropriate, since I took his place. It would be disrespectful.”
“Really? Huh.” Gently buzzed but more tired, she turned around so he could unzip her gown and waited for the little bra-strap tug. It always made her smile, but tonight she had something more serious on her mind too. “So . . . I still want to call Tera.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
She almost fell over. “What?”
“What?” He hung his tuxedo shirt up and reached for his belt. “If a witch came after you tonight, getting Tera involved is the smart thing to do. She may have information we don’t. She may be able to track him somehow in a way we can’t.”
“But—”
“But nothing. I’m not playing around here, darling. Someone is trying to kill you. I don’t care with whom we have to deal or what we have to do, we’re going to find out who it is.”
He’d turned away from her while he spoke, slipping off his pants and putting on a pair of plain black ones, but the emotion behind his words came through loud and clear just the same.
She stopped with her silk nightie above her head, trapped in her arms. “You . . . you really mean that.”
“Of course I do. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“No . . . I just, I’m just surprised.”
Maybe it wasn’t fair of her, but she was. It wasn’t that she didn’t think she was important to him; she knew she was. But important enough for him to purposely involve witches in a demon situation, especially with all the other Gretnegs there? To purposely deal with witches at all?
Especially Tera. She may have been Megan’s best friend—well, no “may” about it—but Tera also had a sister; actually, she had three sisters, but only one of them mattered. Lexie. And Lexie mattered because she’d dated Greyson briefly, and it had not ended well. Something about a spell on his car and a near-death experience. Megan didn’t have all the details. All she knew was, talking about Lexie in front of Greyson amused Tera, who was not the most empathetic or socially adept person in the world.
So to encourage her to call Tera . . .
“You really are worried,” she said. Her nightie swirled around her ankles, its black silk the only thing moving in the room.
He glanced up at her, then looked again. Standing still, his hands loose at his sides. “Yes.”
“Me too.”
His lips quirked. “I can imagine you would be. Now call Tera. I’m going to order some room service. Do you want anything?”
She did, actually. It didn’t seem possible she could be hungry, especially with her notoriously weak stomach. But she was. Hungry for food. Hungry for all sorts of things. It occurred to her then that she really had been at death’s door and had emerged unscathed—at least physically. That she had won and that there was joy to be had in that winning.
It may have been awful. It was also normal, as she would have counseled any one of her patients who’d come to her with the same sort of issue. Human nature was what it was.
In the morning, she had no doubt, she would feel awful again. But being there, alone in the room with him, looking over a menu full of hopefully delicious food—she’d had too much experience with room service to assume that it would be of the same quality as found in the dining room—and anticipating eating it with him in the big white bed . . . She was just glad to be alive.
Even with someone after her. Even with the FBI—shit.
“Greyson, I saw that FBI agent earlier, in the hall. She was the disturbance, you remember, the one I left for.”
“She’s here?”
She nodded.
“Shit.” He sat down on the bed, still holding the thick leather menu he’d grabbed. “Okay, that’s—actually, that might not be such a bad thing, come to think of it. If she’s here alone—”
“No, hold on.” She sat beside him. “She is here alone; at least she was in the hall alone. But the witch, or whatever he was, attacked her too. I heard her scream. That’s when I left the ballroom, but she seemed okay. Just kind of spacy, if you know what I mean. She was wandering down the hall. I started to follow her, and that’s when he—that’s when he grabbed me.”
He squeezed her arm, hard and fast, like an involuntary muscle spasm. “She walked off on her own?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t really make sense, does it? If I’d been attacked, I wouldn’t just stroll away.”
“No, you’re right.” He was silent for a moment, staring at the menu. “But a witch might very well have bespelled her. She might not have felt whatever injury he gave her—if he did injure her—or even remember what had happened or why she was there. Which could be good for us, if you think about it.”
“Greyson.”
“What? I can’t help the fact that it would benefit us all if Little Miss G-Man would go away or the fact that if he did erase her memory, he simply saved us the trouble of doing it ourselves. But . . . damn.”
He shook his head. Megan, used to his look of concentration, waited.
“If he did kill her,” he said. “If he injured her badly enough to kill her, and she’s found dead here, that could be a problem for us.”
Megan sighed and stood up, stripping the nightie back off her head and reaching for the jeans she’d had on earlier. He was already opening the bedroom door, calling for the brothers in the suite’s other bedroom.
It only took a minute to get Agent Reid’s room number from the highly susceptible desk clerk, and another minute to obtain her key as well. She was on the fourth floor, in one of the smaller single rooms.
“Figures,” Greyson said, fitting the key into the door. “The FBI can’t be bothered to pay for a decent room.”
By Megan’s standards the room was decent; better than decent, actually. It certainly beat anything she’d stayed in at one of the chain motels dotted along the highways. But then, she hadn’t grown up in a Georgetown mansion watching her parents dress for inaugural balls either.
Malleus and Maleficarum entered the room first, with Spud staying outside to keep watch. Roc was still questioning the demons who’d allowed Agent Reid past them earlier to see if they’d seen anything, and would meet them when he was done. With something to report, Megan hoped, though she wasn’t counting on it.
The room was empty. At least empty of humanity, empty of a body. It was far from empty in every other way. Fast-food containers littere
d the unmade bed; papers littered the floor. Clothes hung off the back of the chair and lay in limp clumps on the floor.
“Ugh.” Megan wrinkled her nose and stepped over a greasy hamburger wrapper. “It smells funny in here. Like—”
Like blood. Not demon blood. It lacked the faint tangy, smoky scent of that, the whisper of power carried even in the fragrance. Megan had never sampled any demon’s blood, although several times she’d allowed hers to be sampled, once under duress. But she knew the way it smelled. She was attracted to the scent of it; it was part of her demon powers, part of what the piece of demon in her chest gave her.
This was human blood. Old human blood too, in that it was drying.
Megan turned with the others to see the bathroom and grabbed Greyson’s arm so hard she thought her fingers might break off.
Blood everywhere. It streaked the mirrors. It dotted the floor. A sodden towel hung over the edge of the counter, a blotch of violent crimson against the white tile.
“God.” Her voice shook. “There’s so much of it.”
“Not that much, I don’t think.” Greyson’s fingers covered hers. “A little blood spilled can look like a lot. And there’s no body. No blood outside this room.”
“How is that possible?”
He shrugged; she felt his muscles move through his shirt. “I guess she cleaned herself up.”
He and the brothers moved through the room, picking up papers and stashing them in Malleus’s big black bag. Greyson looked at her. “These are her files. Information on us.”
“Right.” Or wrong, rather, but it didn’t matter. There wasn’t much she could say about it, except that she thought they’d better hurry, but they were moving quickly enough.
“So where is she? If she’s not dead, and she’s not here . . .”
Greyson pulled one last sheet of paper from under the desk and handed it to Malleus. “I have no idea.”
“Maybe them down at the front desk’d know,” Malleus suggested. “Maybe she went by there.”
That’s when Megan saw the other thing, the thing they’d missed. She bent down and picked up the key ring, half hidden under the bed by the fallen sheet. “She left her room key, so unless she has another set . . .”
Her eyes met Greyson’s. Faint circles etched the skin beneath his; she imagined hers looked even worse. He nodded. “Let’s go back down to the desk.”
Chapter 10
At least the breeze was cool, even if feeling it across her brow reminded her a little too forcibly of her ordeal on the roof earlier. The wind he’d kicked up, how could he—oh, right. Dumb question. Witches could do just about anything. She was so used to thinking of powers as specific skill sets that didn’t translate; fire demons like Greyson could burn anything and had some basic mental powers but couldn’t read people the way she could or the way any psyche demon could, for example.
But witches weren’t bound by any of that. They dealt with energy, with the molecular structure of things, and could make almost anything bow to their will. It was one reason they kept such a rigid hierarchy.
Tera answered on the third ring. “Hey! I thought you were away.” She sounded awfully chipper for one in the morning, but then she’d probably still been awake; Tera never seemed to need sleep.
“Yeah, I am.” Megan bit her lip and, feeling a little guilty, turned her back on Spud, who had come out with her to keep watch. “I’ve, um, I’ve got a little bit of a problem here, and I was wondering . . . I was hoping you could come. Here. I’m at the Bellreive Hotel.”
Pause. “What kind of trouble? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay, but . . . it seems someone is trying to kill me. And I could really use your help.”
“One of the demons? Do you need me to bring soldiers? How many? What—”
“No, no, don’t do that.” Megan wanted to roll her eyes at the idea of Tera showing up with an army of witches ready to blast holes in the Bellreive’s stone walls, but she couldn’t. The truth was, it warmed her heart. The truth was, Tera would do it in a second too. “It’s . . . I hate to say this, Tera, but I think it’s a witch. Or at least it was a witch earlier. He tried to throw me off the roof.”
“No. Why would a witch try to kill you? Why throw you off the roof? One of us could kill you just like that, you know. There’s so many easier ways to do it. We certainly don’t need—”
Megan shuddered. “Yes, thank you for that reminder. But it wasn’t a demon, and he did magic. He did a spell to get us on the roof and another one to control the wind. He made the wind blow harder.”
“Shit.” Tera paused, for so long Megan wondered if she was still there. “Weather magic is very difficult. He must be incredibly skilled. How did you manage to escape?”
She explained and added, “But there’s no body. His body, it just isn’t there. So if you—please, Tera. We really need you here. Can you come? For a few days?”
“We?”
“Greyson and I. He told me to call you and ask you to come. I mean, I said I wanted to, and he said he thought it was a good idea and that you should.”
“Greyson wants me there?”
“Yes.”
“To stay there, at the hotel?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. I guess this really is serious.”
Megan was prepared for what Tera said next, even allowed herself a small smile. It was exactly what Greyson said she would ask, and Megan answered the questions the way he’d told her to. “Yes, he’ll pay for your room. Yes, a big room, at least a double, and he’s trying to get you a view. Yes, he’ll cover all your bills while you’re here. Yes, all of them. Even pay-per-view. And the bar and the boutiques, sure. No, I don’t need to double-check, he said all, and that means all.”
Finally Tera asked, “You do know I would come anyway, right?”
“Yes, I know.”
“But if he’s offering to pay, I just want to be sure I know what’s covered. I mean, demons are pretty well known for trying to get around their promises.”
“Sure.” Megan glanced back inside. The clerk was on the phone; Malleus saw her looking and gave her a thumbs-up. He was the only person she knew who still did that.
“Okay. I can be there in an hour or so. What room are you in?”
“Fourteen—Hold on.” The glass lobby doors parted with a faint whir; the men stepped out onto the dark green carpet that lay just past it.
“The FBI agent’s gone to the Windbreaker Hotel,” Greyson said. He didn’t look happy about it; she could sense his tension.
Not surprising that he would be tense, really. Of all the places for their wandering FBI agent to have wandered, that was the last place Megan would have expected. “Where the exorcism thing is happening?”
He nodded, his face grim. “She told the clerk she had to help Reverend What’s-his-name rid the world of demons.”
The contrast between the Bellreive and the Windbreaker couldn’t have been sharper had it been etched with a razor blade. Where the Bellreive’s lobby was a wide expanse of gleaming marble and shining wood, with suited bellhops and desk staff, the Windbreaker’s lobby was muggy and loud with ancient air conditioning. The desk, a cheap slab of veneered pressboard, was empty; yellowish lights shone from the ceiling.
“We’re going to need to roust a clerk,” Greyson said. “I seriously doubt the good reverend is playing with his snakes this late at night. He’ll be in his room.”
“We should have waited for Tera.” Megan hugged herself tighter; the buzzing at the base of her neck was growing. Something wasn’t right there, not right at all. There was an . . . an emptiness in the building, somehow.
“Roc will get her here,” he replied. His knuckles made a hollow sound on the desktop. “If our friendly G-girl is in mortal danger, it’s best not to waste any time. We have enough to do this week without getting involved in some silly police business.”
“Right.” The goosebumps on her arms refused to be soothed away, no matter how ha
rd she rubbed. There was really no reason for her to be so nervous, none that she could see. Whatever the odd emptiness was, that blank sort of pressure she felt, it didn’t threaten. The brothers stood around her and Greyson, their poses confident and prepared; she didn’t think a moth would be able to get past them, much less anything else.
Malleus caught her looking around. “Don’t you fret none, m’lady. Nowt’ll ’appen wiv us around.”
“Yeh.”
Greyson knocked on the desk again. “What a rathole.”
She felt the clerk coming before she saw him, the stirring of thoughts and emotions in a back room.
Wait. How did she feel that? She wasn’t open. Wasn’t focusing. Usually in order to sense people in other rooms, she had to lower her shields a little. She’d had to earlier, when she felt Agent Reid and the wi—
No. That wasn’t what she’d felt; at least it hadn’t been what she thought she felt. She’d thought it was a demon. But why?
The clerk, a large man with dandruff dusting his cheap suit and the shiny look of someone who’d been sleeping rough, ambled out from behind a wall. “What do you need?”
“I believe you have a guest here by the name of Walther? Reverend Walther?”
“I can’t give out that information, man. Our guests are—”
Greyson leaned forward. Megan felt his power slide through the air. “I think you can,” he said softly. “Why not tell me his room number? That’s all I need. It’s not so much to ask, is it? No. Of course not. It’s the right thing to do, really. So why not?”
A moment of silence, Greyson’s power curling in the air. Megan shivered, and not just from the weight of it. That power was everything she felt in the hidden hours they spent together, alone, and her body responded. Couldn’t help but respond.
His free hand reached for her, stroked her arm. The touch whispered through her body; she felt it spread through his as well, but he didn’t look at her. He couldn’t, she knew. To break eye contact with the clerk would break the hold on him as well.
